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“He is but a creature of the Malignity. There are many. The Malignity hates free choice, so it terrorizes humans. It seeks to manipulate humans through their ignorance, fear, and naïveté. It has human puppets it cultivates. For your understanding, the Magician is an aspect of the Malignity. Greenfield is just a puppet.” Pento’s face tried to do indignation.

“And the Malignity’s puppets carve the letter
I
on people’s faces,” I said when I realized the
I
on Laura’s face meant the number one. The number of the Magician in tarot.

“That may be, damsel. I know its puppets are recruited when they are young. They always have great hunger for power because they are hollow inside. Mostly, they come to a terrible end, but sometimes they become vicious rulers. They leave no place for those who question their tactics. Your very people suffered from one of those only decades ago, I think.”

“Well, actually, my people have suffered from many of them. But the worst for Jews was Hitler. Some of our other oppressors were popes, imams, wild-eyed screamers of righteousness. Wait. You said I’m a bloodline.”

“As are all the humans. They come from bloodlines, each specially gifted. At different times in human history, certain bloodlines are called upon to either disrupt or restore. You come from the meddler bloodline. In your system of tarot cards, damsel, you are called the Fool. Your line is often useful to us.”

“Because I can appear and change the course of events without warning. My bloodline shows up anywhere and nowhere, like the Fool in tarot. But I’m guessing we and other bloodlines don’t always follow your script. Do they, Pento? The plans of your kind are often foiled. Am I correct?”

“You are correct. It is the unpredictability of human free choice. We set the stage, but humans write the script. It is the way your world has been designed, to help you humans evolve.”

“Evolve into what? What is the destination for human evolution?”

Here Pento became inert, like a figure in a wax museum—lifelike but eerily unreal. Had my question pushed too far? Did his battery run out?

As I waited in the stillness, not even the fake birds flew, I thought about the Magician I had encountered there in the Theater. He had Jerry Greenfield’s ridiculous pompadour hair. The Magician was the ultimate manipulator using both reality and illusions. He could be as malevolent as any card in the deck given the right situation, a creature of the Malignity. But he wasn’t the wild card. I was the wild card.

I took a long look at my ghastly fingers. “I have work to do. I’m ready to leave now.” It was as simple as that. I found myself sitting on the floor of my study, looking at my fingernails.

Exhaustion overpowered me. I crawled to the couch that stood against the wall. When I was comfortable with an afghan covering me, I fell asleep with the sweet anticipation of joining Laura later. I wanted to make love with her one more time before we returned to Seattle.

Chapter Thirteen

The phone on my desk jolted me to rummy consciousness. I checked the clock and saw I had slept several hours. Morning light shone through the cracks between the drawn curtains. I tripped to my desk and grabbed the phone receiver, forgetting it was a quaint model connected to the cradle by a cord. The cradle hurled and crashed off the desk after me as I slumped on the couch, receiver in hand.

“Jeez, Rosten, are you okay? What’s happening there?”

“I’m okay. I’m okay. What’s up?” I was rubbing my forehead, trying to wake up.

“You have to speed things up. It’s gotten bad here in Colorado. Real bad.” I detected a twinge of panic in Fitch’s usually controlled voice.

“How? Did the denizens of eastern Colorado come after you with rakes and pitchforks?”

“Not me. They did something far worse. Someone bombed a women’s clinic about seventy miles east of Denver. It was in the middle of nowhere. There were first responders rushing around me during my entire drive eastward. I just followed them.”

“What does that have to do with Stratton or Greenfield? Wait, you said a women’s clinic? Oh shit.”

“Yeah, oh shit. An exclusive abortion clinic posing as a fat farm for the wealthy. Where the rising Hollywood starlets and preachers’ mistresses can get rid of their mistakes with none the wiser. Someone found out about it and took it out. Six people killed. Only two survived, a doctor and a nurse.”

“And you suspect Jerry Greenfield? C’mon, Fitch. He’s too public and not that stupid, is he?”

“I’ve set up my laptop and other equipment in a little motel along Highway 36. I’m picking up chatter that isn’t all that cryptic. Greenfield might not be stupid, but his lackeys are. They’re blabbing all over the airwaves. His people were involved, all right. And it’s more than an anti-abortion operation. They were looking not only to destroy an abortion clinic, but to destroy all the clinic’s records.” Here Fitch went quiet while I spent a few moments connecting dots.

“I see,” I said. “Looks like my hunch was right. Can you get to that doctor and nurse?” Fitch made a derisive sound as if I’d asked her if she could tie her own shoes. “Find out what they know. Feel free to tell them everything about your trip to Colorado, why you’re there, Laura’s situation, everything. I’m thinking they have a story to tell you and are willing to go public when it’s safe. Do what you can to ensure their safety, and I’m not talking about the police.”

“I’m on it. I’ve got security connections here. The doctor and nurse have been rushed to a hospital in Denver. My guess is I’ll find them there and will need to get them out before someone lays waste to them. As soon as I get their story and have their safety secure, I’m flying back to Seattle. I’ll charter a plane if I have to.”

“You’re amazing, old girl.”

“I’m not old and I’m not a girl. I’ll call you when I get to town. Touché, by the way.” She hung up.

I sat on the couch for several minutes weighing my choices. How many times in my life had I asked myself the perennial question: If I could go back in time, when Hitler was a baby, would I kill him? Would the heinous act of killing an infant save six million Jews and countless others? I’ve never been able to answer that question. But I could answer this one: Would stopping the Stratton / Greenfield machine save anyone? Yes, it could save Laura, at least, and possibly others who dared get in the way of Stratton’s campaign.

It became obvious to me that Elizabeth Stratton, Jerry Greenfield, and Tom Dwight were agents, puppets, of the Malignity. They all could go to hell, and I would be happy to have a hand in it. To me, they had become less than cockroaches. They’d been refined, groomed, and buffed to bring power to forces that loved to torment human beings. And I supposed, grudgingly, that I too had been seasoned to be the Fool, the wild card, the coyote, the trickster who spoiled the meticulous plans of humans and gods. I was the agent of chaos, either by naïveté or by cunning. But it was my choice whose plans I spoiled.

In those moments, I made my choice. I was going to take down Elizabeth Stratton and her machine. If my career, such as it was, ended, my clients disappeared, so be it. I opted for love and, in some larger sense, I chose my fellow human beings.

Determined, I left my office to find Laura. As soon as I walked out the door, I went straight to the living room and grabbed Elizabeth Stratton’s check from the table drawer. I ripped it into the smallest pieces possible and tossed them into the fireplace. Time to hold Laura again, I thought, and started for the stairs leading up to my bedroom.

I was distracted by something glinting on the floor of the front foyer. My keys. My keys with the security fob. They had been on the dresser in my bedroom. My bedroom where I’d last seen Laura. Panicked with foreboding, I took the stairs two at a time and raced to the bedroom. It was abandoned.

Laura’s clothes were gone. Her purse was gone. She was gone. My cell phone had disappeared too. They had gotten to her. While I slept, dreaming on my cozy couch, Stratton’s animals had taken Laura. And I didn’t do anything to stop them.

“No!” I screamed. I dropped to my knees and pressed my hand over my mouth. What could I do? My mind was wild with fear and guilt. I couldn’t land on a thought, much less a plan. All I could think was I had to find Laura. Or they would kill her. If they hadn’t already.

The jangle of my landline beside the bed pulled me out of my morass of indecision. I scrambled to answer it.

“Hey, Ms. Rosten? This is Pete down here at Island Security.”

“Pete? Oh, Pete.”

“Yeah, uh, the guys have been patrolling your property all night, real close like. All’s A-okay. Do you want us to keep it up today?”

“They saw nobody? Nothing? All night?”

“Nothing at all. Your place is tight as a drum, but you need to turn your alarm back on. We noticed here in the office that your system got deactivated. But we figured you were there, so it was no big deal.”

Could I trust my own security company? I wasn’t sure, so I asked them to continue patrolling until further notice, regardless of the expense. He didn’t complain. I didn’t mention Laura.

Where would they take Laura? If the security team didn’t see anyone in the vicinity of the house, how did they get to her? Would the security company lie to me? I strode to the curtains and yanked the cord. Before me spread Hunter Bay lit by morning light. The rain had run itself out. I scanned the bay looking for any kind of a watercraft, but much of the water was hidden by mist.

I pushed my forehead against the glass to peer down at my dock. My dinghy was gone. I rushed to my closet and grabbed the binoculars. When I focused them on the dock, I discerned that the door of the shed was hanging open. Someone had taken Laura and my boat. Maybe my boat had already been gone when we had arrived yesterday, a victim of a random crime. Maybe not.

I pulled the binoculars away from my face to keep a sudden vertigo at bay. When the dizziness passed, I used the binocs again and saw it. Just the tip of the bow was peeking from behind the rock several hundred feet out and to the right of the dock. I was sure that was my boat.

“What the hell? Oh God.” I strung the binoculars around my neck, ran to the closet again, and found my boat shoes. I worked them on trying to hurry but not lose my head. If Dwight or one of his boys was in the boat with Laura, I had to handle it somehow. But to tell the truth, I had no plan. I just needed to get Laura back. She was all that mattered. Not Stratton. Not the High Priestess. Not Pento. Just Laura, only Laura.

I tore to the basement and out the back door to the little patio underneath the back of the house. The small area was strewn with spilled garden tools. I usually kept them on a shelf attached to the house, but someone had rifled through them and tossed them to the ground. Why garden tools?

I took the ladder down to the dock with my back to the water, all the time worried I’d be spotted by whoever was in the dinghy. I thought of Laura being forced down the ladder at gunpoint and my heart twisted for her. She was injured, in a cast, and probably witlessly scared.

When I touched the rock at the bottom, my foot slid out from under me, causing me to hang up briefly on the railings. I looked down and found a bandage stuck to the bottom of my shoe. Laura’s bandage, the one from her face.

The sight of that woeful bandage, sodden and smudged, awoke every cowardly cell that dwelled in my body. Who was I to think I could save anyone? I had bad knees. I should save myself and not worry about anyone else.

“But it’s Laura,” I said aloud. I recalled Laura, in my bed, vulnerable yet strong, crying out in her release. Her eyes said more to me than a thousand love poems. “Yeah, it’s Laura.”

My resolve galvanized, I ran to the end of the dock, almost tripping on an abandoned flashlight. Someone had taken her when it was still dark. I used the binocs to observe the dinghy. It looked empty, but I could tell the cover tarp had been thrown back. Then I detected an odd shape. Someone wearing Laura’s hoodie was lying on the seat.

“Laura! Laura, over here!” I shouted and waved my arms, jumping around like a fool at a rock concert. “Laura, are you all right? Hey, honey, sit up. Can you sit up?”

I didn’t ask myself why Laura was out there. I just knew she was in trouble. After all, who would one-handedly take a dinghy out into the bay and then nap on the uncomfortable seat in the rain? This had to be trouble.

I cupped my hands around my mouth and upped my volume. “Laura! Laaaura!”

No movement. The little dinghy was slipping into the mist and would be lost to sight soon. Something was horribly wrong. How could I get to her? I dashed to the shed, barely registering that the hasp had been pried off. Standing nobly in the corner was the red standup paddleboard I had bought in the spring and used twice: once to try it out and once to learn how much I hated it.

I dragged it outside and leaned it against the shed. Then I retrieved the paddle and rested it alongside the board. Taking two trips, I schlepped the board and its long paddle to the miniscule beach near the dock. I dreaded the next part. I had no time to put on a wet suit or the special water slippers I’d bought along with the board. That water was torturous, around fifty-five degrees. My boat shoes, yoga pants, and sweatshirt would have to do.

The odious paddleboard was unwieldy for me, so I stumbled a few times while getting it positioned to drag into the water, the freezing water. I was sweating and planning to walk into icy Puget Sound waters. For a few seconds, a neon caution sign flashed in my head, “Hypothermia, hypothermia!” but I flipped a mental off switch and remembered I was saving Laura.

“Don’t think,” I said to myself as I started into the water. The iciness surrounding my feet made me suppress a scream, then my ankles, knees, and thighs all were submerged into the sharp cold ocean water. I was now in deep enough to use the board, but I had to will my frozen limbs to lift me onto my knees on the board.

I wasn’t about to attempt standing up on that thing. It was a maneuver I had yet to master and probably never would. Kneeling with my butt on my heels, I wielded the long paddle and made my way out to the dinghy where Laura lay motionless. The paddleboard rocked beneath me. Every few strokes I was nearly tossed off.

“Laura, can you hear me?” I called, still a hundred feet away. Her stillness scared me more than anything I’d ever suffered before. That fear awoke every particle of my heritage, and I began to pray through chattering teeth, “Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech Ha-Olam…”

The big Adonai in the sky must have heard me because I saw Laura twitch. “Laura, sweetheart, get up. Look at me.”

I was almost upon her when she sat up, made one narrow glare at me, and hurled a pair of garden clippers smack into my forehead. The force knocked me off the board and into the frigidity of Puget Sound waters.

Cutting cold froze my scream. I gasped and sputtered as I struggled to get a stiffened arm over the paddleboard. I worked my second arm over the board, but I was too frozen to lift myself back onto the board. I hadn’t mastered that maneuver wearing a wet suit. It was impossible to do it this time.

Laura had a terror-stricken appearance mixed with wrath. My jaw shuddered so violently, I could barely speak. “W-w-why? L-Laura?”

“I believed in you. You…you unspeakable liar. And I trusted you.” Laura’s tears glittered silver in the dull light.

“W-what are you t-t-talking about? N-never mind. Help me. P-please.” My hands couldn’t grip that board much longer.

“Why should I? You’re planning to set me up, give me over to Tom Dwight, to Elizabeth Stratton. I heard what you said on the phone, Dev. I heard you. So I escaped. Get away.”

What had I said on the phone? I’d only talked to Fitch when I was in my office. My brain was addled. I could hardly remember the gist of the conversation. Something about a bombed abortion clinic, dead people, and my having more feelings for Laura than a tawdry fling.

“You heard it wr-wrong. G-get me out of this w-water. D-do you want m-me to die?” Laura’s eyes widened with the thought that my death would be on her hands. “P-please, Laura. Remember, I s-said we are
b-bashert
. Destiny. M-meant for each other.”

She reached into the bottom of the boat and reluctantly lifted the oar over the side and held it out to me. “Okay, you can get in the boat, but that doesn’t mean I trust you. I just don’t want to kill anybody even though, right now, it would feel really good.”

I grabbed the oar with one hand, forcing my numb and stiffened fingers to hold on. I brought the other hand to the flare of the boat. Laura had only one hand, so I knew the onus of the effort would be on me. It took several bruising attempts, but I finally pulled my frozen self into the boat and slumped in the hull. My head rested on the gunwale, and I silently vowed never to get on a paddleboard again.

“Y-you could’ve helped a little more,” I said. I looked up at her to discover she was ready to defend herself with a garden tool. “Hey, that’s my b-brand-new Japanese cuttlefish hoe.” Its spindly fingers pointed at my face. I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or get mad. I emitted a shuddering, jittery laugh. She sat on the rear seat with a determined grimace. “That explains the garden tool mess on the patio.”